School-Wide Behavior Improves with Discipline Model

Science Daily’s recent article, “School-Wide Interventions Improve Student Behavior,” reports that a study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows that the school behavior strategy, School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS), reduces “children’s aggressive behaviors and office discipline referrals, as well as improved problems with concentration and emotional regulation.”

SWPBIS is a prevention strategy. It tries to change student behavior “by setting universal, positively stated expectations for student behavior that are implemented across the entire school.” These expectations are based on analysis of data about student behaviors.

The results have been promising. The study found that students “were 33 percent less likely to receive an office discipline referral than those in the comparison schools. The effects tended to be strongest among children who were first exposed to SWPBIS in kindergarten.”

Here’s a video about SWPBIS in the Kenton (Kentucky) County School District: